Communications devices such as cellular telephones, mobile communication devices, personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptops, and the like are becoming more prevalent as technology advances and makes these devices more powerful and more affordable. These devices are also being constructed with increasing capabilities and can now perform functions that have in the past been performed by dedicated devices. For instance, a common mobile communications device today may have computing capabilities, the ability to communicate with data networks such as the internet, a display than can render high quality still images and video, audio capabilities that allow the device to play music and video soundtracks, as well as the ability to place and receive traditional mobile telephone calls and text messages.
The expanding capabilities of mobile communications devices have allowed the improvement and enhancement of more traditional technologies. For example, voicemail has traditionally been an audio-only feature that requires a telephone connection to a voicemail server. A user would receive some sort of notification that a voicemail is available, and the user would then have to dial into a voicemail server to listen to the message. Thanks to technological advances, visual voicemail is available on many mobile devices. Visual voicemail presents a visual interface to a user's voicemail box and allows the user to manipulate voicemail in various ways that were previously not possible. A user may delete or save voicemail through the visual interface without having to place a call to a voicemail server. A user may also be able to see who the voicemail is from, when it was sent or received, and other characteristic of the voicemail without actually placing a call to a voicemail server. In some implementations, voicemail can be converted to text using speech recognition technology and then read through the visual voicemail interface or transmitted, for example as an email. Current visual voicemail implementations have been limited to manipulations of traditional voice messages.